Kingston Coal Fly Ash Slide

Monday night I got a call from United Mountain Defense's full-time volunteer Matt Landon, and was invited out to a "media caravan" to talk to affected citizens and to see some of the destruction first hand.

For those of you who don't know much about this slide,

On December 22nd, a dike broke in a retention pond at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant (You know, the two towers you see driving over the Clinch River in Kingston). This caused 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash flurry to surge into surrounding waterways, valleys, etc. Water and ash covered and destroyed homes. Thankfully, no one was killed.

What is coal fly ash? It is the leftovers of burned coal. It is stopped from being released into the atmosphere when the coal is burned for energy and stored underwater to prevent the dust from escaping the area and floating around to people, wildlife, etc. Now around 1.1 billion gallons of it is in the Clinch and Emory waterways (tributaries of the Tennessee and watersources). Fly ash is dangerous to those around it.


The first thing we did was to visit an area where we could see the damage. To be honest, I didn't expect it to be that bad since I was arriving 2 weeks after the initial spill.


It was hard to show the scope of damage done in that little inlet. It was just so unnatural and icky.











More to come